They came out of the wood as the sun was sinking, hand-in-hand as before, but walking sedately now, and with a glow upon their faces other than the glow which was dyeing the fir-boles crimson, and making the gorse flame.
Alice was in the seventh heaven, and as for Adam, perhaps he too had learnt a new secret in the greenwood, the existence of which had been hitherto unguessed.
“Well?” said Mrs. Cluett as the couple parted by the yard door.
“Well,” returned Alice, with a conscious laugh.
“You do seem to be gettin’ along,” pursued the mother.
“E-es, we be gettin’ along,” conceded Alice, but no more would she say.
She was subsequently forced to own to herself, however, that they did not get on very fast. Adam was incomprehensible to her, and frequently exasperating; and more than once he seemed puzzled and irritated by things that Alice said and did. Mrs. Cluett, for her part, blamed them both with equal impartiality. Now she would aver that Alice was a simpleton, now that Adam was a fool. Was the thing to be or was it not to be? she wanted to know; even if it was to be Mrs. Cluett was not sure that she cared so very much about it; but if it was not to be, there was no manner of use in Alice wasting her time.
Meanwhile the couple walked together frequently, talked little, and quarrelled more than once. On that warm June night, for instance, when Adam, rolling himself in his blanket, stretched himself in the orchard to sleep under the stars, Alice’s indignation was to the full as great as her mother’s; while the day the girl refused Adam’s offer of pine-cones for her fire, on the ground that they popped like pistols and smelt of turpentine, her lover’s resentment had flashed forth in words fierce and strong.
“You do never seem to care for the things what I like,” he summed up.
To each the other was an unknown quantity; the mutual attraction was almost counterbalanced by a shyness begotten of the knowledge of being misunderstood.